


Beautiful Life

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: In Times of War [3]
Category: Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Consent Play, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Edgeplay, Gaslighting, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 12:25:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17304590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Wade wants so bad to be good. Follow-up to 'Science is Cool'.





	Beautiful Life

**Author's Note:**

> READ THE TAGS.
> 
> ALRIGHT Y'ALL, READY TO BE DISAPPOINTED IN ME?

Wade feels it sometimes, like a fire built up in his gut, clawing at his ribs, smoke pouring from his throat; this desire to do right, do good, do well for the world, instead of just himself. He’s always felt it, but there are ways of muting it, ways of tamping down that fire, making the burning negligible. When his mind snaps, it becomes a thing he can ignore, a thing he can blame on his broken brain.

Laying on the bed after the two alternate Nates – alterNates? – have disappeared, he feels the fire burning high and wild. Be a good guy, do the right thing.

What does that mean, for a guy like him?

He’s not good. He’s not a monster, but he’s not good. He’s self serving and selfish and mean when people try to get close, greedy and crude and cruel. He likes hurting people, likes hurting himself.

His eyes find the restraints on the bed, his skin sings with the ghosts of the touches that had been lavished on him earlier. War will come sooner or later. The room stinks of sweat and sex and stale air. The bedspread is filthy with come, his own and theirs, leaking out of him.

Dragging himself out of the bed is difficult. He can’t bring himself to discard the blanket – nasty, nasty, but he wants the reminder, the proof that he hadn’t just dreamed that, even if it’s going to get him punished. No, the comforter stays where it is, stained in a way that is painfully obvious but perfectly debauched in a way that matches the chains and leather dangling from the headboard.

He makes himself shower, mindfully. Focus on the heat and the soap and the wet drag of his own hands over his ghoulish skin, breaking himself open when he scrubs too hard. The wounds heal before the blood washes away down the drain; his skin is too sensitive, too delicate for the rough treatment he shows. The water soothes him, though, and the smell of the soap; the heat and steam hugging him like no one will ever again, and he loses himself to that for a while, humming to himself in a way he knows is probably tuneless and annoying but which plays to his own ear as happy, sweet.

The fire inside him doesn’t die down as he carefully sets about drying himself off, the room full of steamy fog. Wasn’t water supposed to douse fires? Bullshit.

He’s wavering between deeply upset and fucked-out contentment, which honestly isn’t the worst place to waver. If your moods have to wibble wobble in your chest and in your head, there are definitely worse ones to be stuck between.

Really, he should be scared. He should always be scared, and if he thinks too hard about his situation, he is, a little. Nate corrupted like this, made into this obscene mockery of himself, unrestrained in his cruelty, always angry, always violent – yeah, he was scary. But he was scary the way a well-loved horror flick was scary; predictable, following a pattern. He wanted Wade to fight, to struggle; Wade could still read Nate like a fucking kiddie book and all his snarling did nothing to hide the fact that nothing got him harder faster than Wade giving as good as he got.

And Wade could have been cool with that. Yeah, it probably would have sucked anyway, being kept like an animal in a rich guy’s menagerie, but really, what was out in the wild rest of the world for Wade anyway. Wade could have done fine as a pet, yeah, if he was the kind of pet who got attention.

It’s not even affection he wants anymore. He’d angled for it at the beginning, trying winningly to coax out some of the old Nate, see that ‘I shouldn’t smile but I can’t quite help it’ twitch of his lips. Feel a touch that didn’t snap into something painful. Wade had wanted to make this work, at the beginning, because in the beginning he’d still thought maybe there was a chance of getting his friend back. That his friend was lost and _could_ come back.

It’s been years, and Wade understands better now. Nate’s not lost, he’s just changed. War _is_ Nate, he’s not an invader in his body or a madness that could be fought or worked around or tamed. War is Nate given the chance to eschew morality and ascend to that higher purpose he’s always though he needed. He’s Nate dialed up to eleven, stripped of compassion and sweetness, the good trimmed away like fat from a carcass.

“Okay, morbid, jeeze, we get it,” Wade grumbles, dropping the towel on the floor because he’s depressed again and who the fuck cares if it goes mildewy on the tile? It’s his cage, he’ll shit where he pleases.

The issue was, Nate doesn’t hardly even visit anymore. He punishes Wade when Wade makes an attempt to escape, and they might have some fun during that or maybe just Nate does, depending on how things go, but afterwards he’ll fuck off to do whatever War needs to do all fucking day. And stay gone, for such long stretches that, if Wade’s not careful, he’ll forget where he is. The room, with its little en suite and its shitty cable reception – is it even cable, he wonders suddenly, standing naked in the bathroom, or is it some fucking local broadcast network just for the compound he was held in – it all becomes blurry, it fades into memory of another time, a different place.

He used to have an apartment that was set up similar. Nate had known, had visited, had fucked him on just about every flat surface (and some of the not-so-flat ones) in the place. Maybe it was intentional, maybe the cell he lived in had been designed with some measure of care after all.

Weird, that he should have to crush a surge of hope at such an ugly realization, but he does. He knows better than to hope that any part of War cares about him or his comfort. Hope is a four letter word, the kind that makes pain feel even worse.

He shoves his way out of the bathroom, intent on ruminating on the ceiling for a while maybe, or trying to hunt something decent down on the television, completely blindsided by the sight of Nate himself sitting on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap, mouth grim as he waits.

“Tee-vee it is then,” Wade says brightly, turning to head to the couch, not entirely unsurprised when he’s grabbed and shoved into the wall, hard enough to bounce his head against the drywall. He sighs.

Nate doesn’t stand up or get in his face. There’s a whole room between them but it doesn’t matter. Nate’s the only human being Wade as seen in ages, and honestly, Wade’s maybe a little tired of it. Of the world revolving around Nate, what he feels for Nate, how much it hurts not to see him.

How much it hurts _to_ see him.

God, no wonder he spent so much time in fantasy land. Completely forgetting where and who he was anymore was a way better trip than facing the music, but wasn’t that always the case.

Telekinetic fingers, blunt and harsh, grip his head, forcing him to face forward. Nate doesn’t hold his eyes open or try to pry his eyes toward him, so Wade keeps his gaze trained toward the wall with the television mounted to it.

“It’s always the hard way with you, isn’t it Wade?”

“That’s what she said,” Wade grumbled, because the joke was obvious and because it kept him from doing something dumb like trying to struggle. Struggling just got Nate’s blood up, which wasn’t _really_ a difference from how things used to be, but the implications sure were.

For a moment there was just silence, Wade tense against the wall, glaring at the black void of the television while Nate just sat and considered him. It made Wade want to jitter and jive, like a junkie in the throes of his detox, or getting a long sought fix. Nate knew it made him squirm and probably liked it, so Wade held out as long as he could.

It felt like an eternity.

When he started jigging one leg, Nate made a noise, amused but mean. Like he was disappointed in Wade but so used to it that it was more amusing than anything. Wade looked at him, he couldn’t help it.

“Good boy,” Nate crooned, that sickly sweet tone people reserved for use by pet owners for when their obnoxious pet finally, probably accidentally, did what was wanted of them. Because Nate might not be able to read his mind, but he sure knew how to get under his skin. “Who was here, Wade?”

“Blow me,” Wade suggested cheerfully, grin going rictus-stiff as his head snapped to one side, slapped by an invisible backhand.

Forced to look forward again, Nate hadn’t moved a bit. He sat with his elbows on his knees, fingers laced between, staring at Wade like he was a particularly interesting chemical reaction. His eyes were fixed on him, keen under lofted brows, his mouth pressed in a flat, thin line. “Someone you want to protect, then. Why couldn’t I sense them?”

The grin never really left Wade’s face. There was struggling and there was _struggling_. Playing dumb and refusing to give real answers to any of Nate’s questions was a passive sort of struggle, a sort of drawn out game Wade could play, waiting to see how long it took Nate to snap.

Back in the beginning of this, before he’d realized that this was just how Nate was now, before he’d resigned to the idea that the old Nate wasn’t really ever coming back regardless of what he did, he’d taken Nate’s patience in these moments as proof that he still loved him. Hindsight being twenty/twenty and all, Wade thinks it should have been clear a lot sooner that it wasn’t patience Nate was displaying when they did this, it was restraint. The sort a fighter might use, storing his energy for the main event.

It sure as hell wasn’t shown out of love, either.

“Old age takes everything from us.”

Blood bursts from his nose this time, the blow sharper, harder. Not in response to the words, exactly, Wade thought, but more retaliation for his refusal to be scared.

“I know it pleases you to think you’re funny, Wade, but this is important. You remember _important_ , Wade? How did they shield themselves?”

“Oh, we didn’t even _talk_ about protection.”

A line of tension runs across Nate’s face, a spasm like he’s hurt himself thinking too hard about Wade’s implication. Wade sniffs snot back, his broken nose already perfectly straight again, but his sinuses full of blood. He hawks and spits, making eye contact the whole time because he knows Nate will still think it was gross.

It shouldn’t thrill him the way it does when Nate pushes to a stand, slow and unconcerned. He doesn’t break eye contact either, mismatched eyes boring into Wade’s blank white. If Wade weren’t being held against the wall, head locked facing forward, he probably would have tried to move -- toward Nate or away, it was hard to say, even now. As it was, he was pinned like a bug to a board, and he couldn’t make himself look away at this point, heart doing some weird calisthenics bullshit as Nate prowled over, looking bored but interested, like he was going to work, but at least the job was novel.

“I know you’re lonely, Wade,” he says, calm and easy, the way the air gets right before lightning strikes. Wade tries to ignore the curl of heat in his belly, dick already interested in the promise of Nate in _that_ mood. It was pretty Pavlovian, at this point; Nate talking meant pain, pain meant eventually sex, so his dick just skipped the middle man and went straight for the gold. Wade honestly was a little envious of how easily his body moved past all the negatives of this situation.

_Good on ya, body, live your best life or whatever._

Nate could still be gentle, was the thing. Maybe the worst thing, though honestly there were a lot of things in competition for ‘worst thing’. His hand on Wade’s face, thumb smearing blood from beneath his nose across his cheek, could just as easily be wrapped around his throat, crushing his windpipe. Probably would be, before the night was out.

“You’re lonely and you don’t think I pay enough attention to you. You can’t even keep still for a whole minute when I look at you. You’re desperate enough to try running away just to get my attention, and now you think you can keep a secret from me. But you’re mine, aren’t you? After everything, that’s what you are, is _mine_. So tell me who fucked you, Wade.”

Wade knows he’s already deep in his own head. He’s been there since the alterNates (yeah he liked that, it was punchy, a cool crossover event name) left. The steady, calm cadence of Nate’s voice is drawing him further down, putting him right back in that space where all he knew to do was obey, to react in physical, brutal honesty.

By the same note, he’s been burning with that same passion, that want to do good, _be_ good, not in a sex way but in a real, for-the-benefit-of-the-world way. Nate wasn’t a good person, not this version of him. Playing into his palm was probably at best morally dubious.

The hand on his face shifts, but Nate deigns to keep gentle for now. “Tell me who thought they were good enough to touch you, Wade.”

 _Oh, super not fair_.

He lets himself smile. “You’re the only one allowed,” he said, revelling in the flash of irritation that crossed Nate’s face. “Only ever you.”

“Wade…”

It comes out as a warning, bitten off and irritable, but there’s a certain twist to that irritation too, a note Wade could almost trick himself into thinking was amusement.

There’s not room to move, not with the TK holding him this way. Before, Nate would have struggled to sustain this kind of control over any duration, fighting between holding back the TO and holding an opponent. Now it seemed to be easy, the kind of thing he did almost unconsciously. What that meant in the moment was that Wade couldn’t cock his head to facilitate his batting eyelids and gentle ‘don’t you believe me’ pout.

“There were two of you, actually. You look real good with a beard, bee-tee-dubs, absolutely encourage you to try it for a while, break up the clean-cut Bond Villain in Plate Armor look with a little Dilf Lumberjack.”

And that does seem to actually give Nate pause, makes him look at Wade that way he sometimes has where he’s wondering if Wade’s gone crazier than normal or if he’s just guessed real lucky on something he was thinking. Wade’s smile is a little more sincere now, and if he weren’t being held immobile against the wall, he might have leaned into Nate’s space, into the hand resting on his cheek.

“The other version of you was short, can you believe, like five-ten, tops. I bet he lies and says he’s five-eleven, but it’s clear as anything. His _cock_ though, I cannot _stress_ \--”

It’s not really surprising when Nate cuffs him, hard, open palmed and unforgiving. He was pushing for it, and getting it feels like a shitty win, but it’s still a _win_. He can taste blood on his teeth and his expression is more a baring of teeth now than any kind of smile, but it’s all natural, honest.

“They were so happy to see me, Nate, they took such good care of me, and it was okay because it was still you. Lucky me.”

Fury blooms on Nate’s face like dawn flooding the horizon, which is to say it sort of sneaks up until suddenly it’s plainly there, impossible to ignore. The hand that had been so sweetly caressing him, that had slapped him so hard he was still a little dizzy, went around his throat; Nate’s lip curls and his eyes go hard and cold.

But he doesn’t actually shut Wade up. Which is interesting, because when Nate wants silence, he gets it. Wade is starting to get the idea that maybe Nate’s a little into the idea of Wade being double teamed by two of him.

“They fucked me so good,” he says, letting his voice drip longing, like he’s so thirsty for it that the mere memory of their dicks has him half desperate. “So _good_ , Nate, I gotta be real: I forgot all about you when they were in me.”

The noise Nate makes is the sort of ugly-sexy noise Wade thinks men have probably been making since their brains evolved far enough to experience jealousy. It’s hungry and furious, and Wade lets himself gag a little when Nate clutches his neck hard, pushing him up the wall. It’s kind of an interesting move because held up like this, Wade’s looking down at Nate. Really, he’s at almost the same angle he’d used to make eye contact with grim-dark short!Nate. Suddenly, as if his dick weren’t already invested in the situation, he’s fully hard, pinned between the wall and Nate’s bulk.

Nate has all the power, always, and that’s okay because really, Wade’s not good with power. He’s not the kind to go crazy with it, but more the kind to get lost and forget he has it anyway. Having instructions, someone else steering, it generally works out. Nate could choke him out or crush his neck or throw him like a ragdoll and maybe Wade would die for a minute (or six) or maybe he’d just hurt really bad but it didn’t matter, didn’t matter because it was _Nate_.

Held up like this, Wade shouldn’t be able to breathe. Certainly shouldn’t be able to _talk_ , and usually that would be the point because sometimes even Nate needs him to be quiet and god knows he won’t shut himself up. Except Nate’s holding him paralyzed everywhere but the face, so he can’t even turn his head, but the TK must also be being used to support his weight so he’s not really dangling from Nate’s hand so much as Nate’s just gripping him there for show, putting just enough pressure there to make it uncomfortable, to encourage the _thought_ of violence.

And yeah, yeah, he hates being manipulated and he hates that look Nate gets when he thinks he’s really got Wade wrapped around his finger, he hates the surreal levels of arrogance Nate gets into sometimes, especially these last few years ( _fuck_ the Age of Apocalypse, honestly) but it’s still Nate, still the scowling bastard who always dished back exactly what he was served, sometimes more, who knew all the buttons Wade needed pressed.

It’s Nate, even if he wants to pretend to have _ascended_ or whatever the fuck.

“They fucked me so hard I think I died,” he says, grinning that mean grin because he knows the buttons to push on Nate, too, “Fucked me so hard I couldn’t even talk, Nate, they shut me _up_ it was so good. No cheating with TK nooses or chokeholds, either, just dickin’ down so good my brain stopped.”

Being thrown across the room has never felt so good. Wade realizes only as he crashes into the bed that the hold on his limbs is gone, so he rolls into the stained comforter and makes a show of taking a deep breath of the sex-funk that clings to it. Honestly, it was pretty gamy before he’d been fucked in half on it, but the key notes to the stink coming off it now are definitely sex.

It takes Nate approximately half a second to be back on Wade, crushing him into the bed, arms pinned behind his back, ass up. And Nate’s wearing his dumbass War getup, the armor that’s honestly _so_ 13th century, but given the way he shoves his hips against Wade’s bare ass, Wade can only imagine he’s ready to rumble.

“They came inside and fucked in it so deep, I thought it was never going to stah--”

A hand closes on the back oh his head, shoving his face down so he gets a mouthful of blanket, and Nate follows so he can snarl in Wade’s ear. “Enough,” he says, but he doesn’t rip Wade’s throat open or tear his tongue out, and Wade figures that’s as good as permission to keep talking.

Wade waits until the pressure on the back of his head lets up, listens as Nate’s armor starts unbuckling itself, and says, “D’you remember when we used to use lube? They sure did. God, they took their time, I think the bearded one put his whole hand in my ass before he’d let me take their cocks.”

The noise Nate makes is angry but it’s angry-sexy, like Nate’s taking all this as a challenge, and really, isn’t it? Nate versus the alterNates, who can fuck Wade better? It’s a point of pride, Wade knows, that Nate can always make him come, whether he was in the mood when they started or not. Nate knew him, knew what he liked and how to give it to him, and he was a possessive asshole these days too.

“They fucked me like they _needed_ it. They fucked me like they thought _I_ needed it, and who would know better than _you_ how bad I need it?”

Teeth find his neck, digging in, and Wade tries to bite the sound back but there’s nothing he can do to stop his back from arching up against Nate. This is new for them, since the whole Becoming War thing; Nate always held Wade down, sure, tied him up or kept him still with TK, but maybe the idea of competing with these other selves makes him forget, or maybe he’s reading what Wade’s saying and wants to give Wade a little wiggle room. Nate always loved a challenge, didn’t he, that was something that had survived the ravages of time.

“Is it weird to be jealous of yourself? I can hear you being jealous. Kinda hot, actually. It turn you on that there’s a version of yourself that’s better at fucking me?”

Nate’s hand slides around to palm his throat, strangling with sudden precision, just enough to make it impossible for Wade to speak without totally cutting off his air. “Is that what you’re looking for, Wade? Me to be jealous?” Pulling up on Wade’s throat, Nate moves so he’s kneeling behind Wade, dragging him up to press back to chest against him. “All I’ve heard out of you so far is that even when you’re getting the best fuck of your life, you’re fantasizing that it’s me in you.”

There’s a lot Wade could say to that. Denials he could make, or requests. But Nate doesn’t let up on his neck, holding him in just such a way that he can’t part his jaw at all. Wade makes a few faces, attempting words anyway, arms tensing as he tries to break the hold on his wrists, reflex compelling him to claw at Nate’s wrist. He can’t, Nate holds him easy, arms pinned between them.

“You love your games, but you always want the same thing. It’s all you need, isn’t it, all you really want,” War mutters in his ear, and he shudders, that low, mildly acerbic tone is lulling him down again, into the place Nate always brings him to so easy, where the very idea of struggling becomes increasingly foreign. “Someone manages to get in here to you and you let them fuck you, because they look like me? I’m not jealous, Wade, I’m impressed that you’ve committed so fully to this role.”

Wade has exactly enough space to sort of writhe back against Nate, frustrated by the armor barring him from skin-to-skin contact.

“Being mine,” Nate clarifies, and Wade can’t see his face but he can hear the self-satisfaction just oozing through the tone. “You want to be mine so badly, maybe all this mess is just from you playing pretend. No one heard anything but you screaming, maybe you were just having a little playtime all by yourself.”

Probably says a lot about Wade that his cock is drooling onto the sheets, a hairsbreadth from bursting just from Nate’s not-even-particularly-dirty talk. Wade feels right on the edge suddenly, a little dismayed by how quickly his brain started picking apart his own vivid memory of the session with the alterNates. How had they gotten there? Why would they have shown up in the first place? The whole thing stood  pretty shoddy in the logic department -- _two_ versions of Nate, superficially similar yet visually distinct, who were real interested in fucking him? -- except he’s certain it had really happened.

Ninety-nine percent sure.

Eighty-five.

Pretty certain.

His hands are released and fly immediately to the grip on his neck, which gets more uncomfortable by the minute. It’s not really an act when he struggles this time, Nate wrestling with him briefly, putting him where he wants him. With his knees knocked wide, so Nate can shove his free hand between then, groping his ass and circling a dry finger against his hole.

“The best fantasy you could come with after a month without is two of me fucking you,” Nate says, toying with him. “It doesn’t even matter if you have real playmates, does it? Nothing can do it for you but me.”

All at once Wade is dropped, Nate remaining on his knees behind him as Wade is sent sprawling on his belly, throat working as he fought not to choke on the air he sucked in. “You want me to fuck you, Wade?”

Wade twists his head to the side, peering at Nate from the corner of his exposed eye. “Not tonight, honey, my head hurts.”

He can feel the force of the TK moving around him, over him, Nate’s armor coming off in a sudden storm of motion and then dropping around the bed. Wade sort of thinks that’s cheating, because if you’re dumb enough to put on a suit of armor then you should have to suffer through taking it off when it’s most inconvenient as penance for making everyone else deal with your weird LARP fetish.

Naked now, Nate presses Wade hard into the bed, and Wade would love to ask how the raging hard-on shoved along his asscrack plays into Nate’s act of not being affected at all by the thought of Wade being fucked by two multiverse clones of himself. Unfortunately, all he can get to leave his mouth is this ugly, throaty moan as Nate grinds him so hard into the mattress he feels his hips creak.

“So that’s tonight’s game, hmm?” Nate growls, and he sounds pleased, vicious and eager for blood but _pleased_ . Sad, in a way, that it’s still so hot to make Nate happy with him. “Go ahead, Wade, tell me you _don’t_ want it.”

The TK is back in force again, catching Wade as soon as he starts trying to struggle out from under Nate, holding him taunt but still as Nate draws back to run his hands down Wade’s spine. His touch is soft today, none of the usual violence to it, langid and gentle like he has the right, like Wade is his to touch whenever and however he likes.

“Fuck you,” he snaps, and Nate laughs as he squeezes Wade’s ass, pushing him open to grind against him better. Wade has the presence of mind to twitch away from the touch, making a noise like he’s disgusted. “Sick puppy, I’m not gonna --”

Nate rocks against him, just friction and pressure for now, teasing his head against Wade’s ass, and Wade bites his own lip, wanting to bury his face in the blankets but not allowed. “Not gonna what, Wade? Play along? Let me? You’re mine. It doesn’t matter what you’re _gonna_. You take what I give you, how I give it to you.”

For a second, Wade thinks he’s going to push in dry. God knows that’s sort of become the norm, Nate fucking Wade bloody, fucking him open so steady and fast Wade almost didn’t care how it tore him up. He braces for it, ready to catch the scream that he knows will try to crawl out his throat, and Nate holds himself positioned to do it, before backing off with a laugh. Wade can’t help feeling a little cheated when Nate sits back, smoothing his hand up Wade’s back again, over his side, skirting his ribs before withdrawing entirely.

“You built a whole fantasy were you could pretend I come here to take care of you,” Nate informs him, releasing the TK hold on him, trusting Wade to know the warning of his hand on the small of his back for what it was. “You want to pretend like you need delicate handling, like the best thing about you isn’t that you _don’t_ ? You want it _slow_?”

Wade hears something smack into Nate’s hand, plastic flying into his palm from the bedside. There’s a lot of crap on the floor by the bed. Could be anything. He licks his lips, head bowed, and waits.

“You want it _gentle_?”

The bottle cracks open, Nate’s hand trails back over his ass, thumbing him open. Wade whines, shakes his head.

“You got it,” Nate says, quiet, considering, and watches Wade jerk as he dribbles lube over his ass, letting it crawl in lazy snail trails over Wade’s balls, down his thighs, over his cock.

He’s pressing one thick thumb over the mess, circling and teasing, and Wade hitches a sob. “Nate, please,” he breathes.

“Please what?”

“Don’t,” Wade says, begs really, and Nate grins, pushing his thumb in, so Wade falls on his elbows, thighs shaking. He repeats himself, louder, as Nate withdraws and repositions his hand so he can start fingering him proper.

They play each other’s game in this way, pushing, always pushing, but Nate has all the power. He gives the orders and calls the shots. Wade’s protests have an edge of fear to them that’s uneasy, a little too honest, increasingly frantic as he hitches and jerks, half-assed attempts to crawl away as Nate carefully, studiously, fucks him wide, three fingers, then four, sunk so deep as he rubs his thumb snug against Wade’s perineum.

It’s a mockery of tenderness, perfectly aware of Wade’s struggles, too familiar with his body to miss his prostate if he doesn’t want to. Wade finds himself close, so close, but every time he tries to sneak his hand between his legs to deal with himself, the TK has hold of him in an instant, and Nate’s fingers go almost cruel inside him, raking him, pushing him wide open.

Wade wants to be _good_ , but it’s getting very difficult to figure out what that means anymore. The end of the world sort of fucks your priorities to other people. Being the genocidal overlord’s fucktoy _also_ fucks with your priorities. Having a whole host of complicated, soft, smooshy feelings for said genocidal overlord, yet again and you guessed it, fucks with your priorities.

If Nate’s the bad guy then Wade _should_ fight him, _should_ want to escape; the preformative nature of his struggle should be sincere. He shouldn’t be rocking back on that hand when he makes his desperate little bids for freedom, he should be doing his best to kick Nate’s ass. His dick, at the very least, should not be this hard.

Except maybe, okay, maybe doing good in this situation is different. Maybe if Nate’s in here fucking Wade’s brains out, he’s not out there, killing people and whatever all else he does that keeps him gone for weeks at a stretch. Wade’s not delusional enough to think that makes him a good guy by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe it’s better than the struggle that results in days and weeks and months of Nate ignoring him.

He’s might be a pathetic, needy waste of air begging to be fucked by a monster, but it’s keeping blood off Nate’s hands for a minute or two, so maybe there’s a balance there.

“I see the merit to this,” Nate says, rocking his hand into Wade, fingers curling and stroking with the motion. “I can make this last all day, never quite what you need, always a breath away from falling apart for me. But that’s not what you really _want_ , is it Wade?”

All at once he has control of his limbs again, and Wade can’t even make himself try to do anything but spread his legs a little more, gasping when Nate obligingly pushes his fingers in harder, faster, getting Wade so close. “Bastard,” he breathes, not sure if he means it or if they’re still playing. “God, you’re a bastard, fuck you.”

“I forgot how cute you are right before you start begging,” Nate says, unbothered, amused. Wade takes advantage of his freedom of movement to twist a bit, looking over his shoulder to glance at Nate, see if he’s into this at all because judging by the tone they might as well be doing taxes. But oh, no, he’s hard, cock flushed a deep, angry red where it’s not buried in his own fist.

He groans, hanging his head again, shuddering. “Nate, c’mon…”

“I thought your head hurt, Wade,” Nate purrs, and _god_ , this could have happened years ago, in Wade’s old apartment; Wade could really forget. “I thought you didn’t _want_ this.”

“Sooner you get off the sooner you’ll _leave_ ,” Wade snaps, vicious, trying to provoke even as he melts into the sensation of Nate’s thumb pressing tight, firm little circles into his perineum. It feels so good, and every hitch and jerk of their bodies makes the leather and chains rattle, reminding him why it _shouldn’t_ . He _wants_ and he _hates_ and it’s too much, too much of not enough, enough to make him feel strung out and sick.

And Nate, because he’s a bastard and because he has the very literal upper hand here, just hums as if considering the idea. He must have stopped squeezing his own dick, because suddenly his other hand is on Wade’s ass, pulling him open to watch his fingers work. “You’re a bad liar, Wade. You love it, you’d love it even if you didn’t _want_ it, but you do. I know.”

“If I want it and you know it then hurry up and give it, you son of a bitch.” The words are meant to be angry, but they came out soft, unedged and hungry. More a whine than a snarl.

They’ve been playing each other’s game for too long now, Nate just rumbles out that slow, low laugh, the one that used to mean Wade had genuinely made a good joke, hit it right on the head and almost tricked him into laughing. “Beg me for it, Wade.”

At this point, it’s not even about pride. Wade’s never been too proud to beg for sex.

“Since when do you need an engraved invitation?”

He expects a slap, to get his face shoved into the bed; he expects pain because for the longest time now, pain has been all that Nate wanted to give. Nate wanted to break him, and he just kept fighting, but with most of Nate’s hand buried in his ass, fingers grazing his prostate ever third or fourth stroke in, he was feeling tired. He’s tired and he’s halfway to being desperate, and he definitely doesn’t expect Nate’s _face_ to press against his ass, tongue hot as it traces the stretch of him around Nate’s fingers.

In an instant he’s shaking, trying to steady himself on his knees, arching into it, warbling this awful whining noise he will one hundred percent deny later. “Oh, fuck, Nate, c’mon.”

“You’re close,” Nate breathes, and does that thing with his tongue again, and Christ that’s a double entendre, isn’t it. Because yeah, he sure is _close_ , his dick’s been drooling precum for as long as they’ve been on the bed, his whole body is alive with the need to be filled proper, for it to be Nate’s cock in him, not his fingers. “A little more, Wade.”

Wade tries. He really does. His fingers tangle on the bed, clutching so hard it hurts, and he can taste his own blood from how he’s worrying his lip to try and keep himself from talking, try and keep this going even though he so desperately needs more. It’s a game, and games have winners and losers.

Then Nate shifts his hand and his tongue dips _inside him_ and he groans when Wade presses back on him, squeezing his hip to encourage him. Wade thinks he’s going to come, _finally,_ finally going to be allowed, his whole body livid and desperate for it. His balls draw up, bloody drool runs down his chin as he gasps, his cock jerks --

And it stops. Not the torture lavished upon his ass, just his orgasm. Right on the very moment of completion, it’s like Nate grabbed him without moving his hands and pinched, holding it back, and really that’s too much.

“Nate, please god, please, fuck, I’ll do anything, I’ll be your very best friend, just let me come, please, it’s, you gotta, stop, please, fuck, _fuck_.”

Nate’s face might be buried in his ass, but Wade knows the smirk that’s curling those lips. And you’d think, you’d really _think_ , after a performance like that, given that last Wade checked, Nate was also desperately hard, Nate would give in, but of course he doesn’t. He keeps it up for another short eternity, Wade’s increasingly fragmented pleas almost enough to drown out the sloppy sound of his ass being fucked open by Nate’s fingers and tongue.

Twice more Nate let’s Wade get to the very knife’s edge of orgasm, always catching it right before Wade can get any relief. It’s like going insane, Wade suddenly hyper aware of his entire body, every spot where the lesions have broken open, of where the skin is so flooded with blood it burns. He’s crying by the second time, hardly able to get words out, just a cycle of “Stop, please, need, Nate, Nate, Nate.”

“Did they make you beg, too,” Nate asks, pulling away, everything suddenly gone from Wade, so he’s just a huddled wreck melted on the sheets with his ass willingly exposed. “The other me’s?”

“No,” Wade croaks, cheek pressed into the mattress, tears soaking into the bedding. “Not like this, not like you.”

And that seems to be just the right thing to say, because Nate hauls him up, moving them both so he’s sitting with Wade in his lap, thighs tight in his hands, cock pressing into Wade. “ _Nobody_ can fuck you like me,” he snarls, pulling Wade’s body down onto him, huge and hard and perfect. Wade gasps, throat tight; he feels impaled in the very best way, so full he thinks he’ll probably taste it when Nathan comes.

Honestly, Nate might be old, and a rat bastard sonofabitch, but he fucks with a single minded intensity, like blowing Wade’s whole fucking mind requires the same kind of attention and ruthless focus as any other murder.

Holding him still not with telekinesis now but just with the sheer force of his grip, so Wade can feel bruises bursting to life under his fingertips, his inner thighs surely some kind of sight at this point, Nate fucks up into Wade, and really, Wade can’t think of anything finer.

The alterNates might have stretched him to the very limit, both of them fucking him together, and he’ll cherish the memory of feeling that full for the rest of his life, without a doubt. But they weren’t Nate. Not _his_ Nate, and maybe this is proof that in some fucked up way he _does_ want to be here, right where he is; he wants to be Nate’s whenever Nate wants him.

He can struggle and snarl and fight, and he can run away when he’s bored and feels like Nate’s forgotten about him, but Wade’s pretty sure this is him living his best life. Because like this, with all the other shit on his mind at any given time, Nate’s not thinking about anything but Wade.

When he comes, it’s a surprise to him, for all that he’s been chasing it for what feels like a fucking year at least. Nate doesn’t let go of his legs, but he does spare him a curl of telekinetic energy, wrapping his dick up tight and stroking him in rough, hard time. Wade expects to be denied, used to Nate making this as difficult as possible on him, used to Nate being after his own pleasure first and foremost. He sucks in a breath, ready to beg again, and just like that he’s coming, hard enough that it knocks the breath out in a grunt, like he’s been punched.

Nate fucks him through it, fucks him into oversensitivity, until Wade’s unable to hold himself anymore, sagging back against that broad chest, gasping and moaning. It’s only when it’s right to on the verge of discomfort that Nate jerks their hips flush together, coming so hard and so deep Wade’s not sure it’ll ever all be out of him.

When this arrangement had been started, Nate used to come to Wade almost daily, fucking him for hours, until they were both sloppy with it. Nate would come to him bloody and Wade would suck him off in the shower and they’d go from there, until Nate finally let Wade sleep. Some nights, many, he’d stay unless absolutely required to do otherwise.

Back then, Wade hadn’t fought the arrangement much. He was seeing more of Nate now that he was a genocidal Horseperson of the Apocalypse than he’d ever seen him during his stint as the savior of mutantkind.

Then Nate started staying away. He never explained, he didn’t _have_ too, because he was War and no one dared question him. Wade tried harder at first, like an absolute sucker. He’d tried to turn on the charm, tried every trick he knew to make Nate feel as good as possible. Nate still only showed up once every six or seven days, if Wade was lucky.

When Wade started trying to run away, sleep overs were canceled entirely, and Wade hadn’t really thought about how much he missed them until Nate moves him almost carefully to lay down, stroking a warm metal hand over Wade’s flank like he’s an animal needing to be soothed as he curls around his back.

It’s warm and nice, and Wade is still struggling to get his breath back, but Nate already seems perfectly relaxed.

“Look at that,” he said, moving his hand from Wade’s side to his stomach, smearing Wade’s come into his skin. “Seems like I shut you up, too. No choking required.”

“Oh, you were _so_ jealous,” Wade mutters, mostly to be contrary. “Super jealous.”

Nate kisses the back of his head, and it’s almost like how things had been way, way back in the beginning. Then Nate says, “Shut up and go to sleep before I resort to snapping your neck.”

And Wade could carry on. He could snap back something pithy and brave, and maybe Nate would follow through with the threat or maybe Wade could bait him into round two, keep this party going. But there’s something that’s almost beautiful in just laying here, Nate’s steady heartbeat against his shoulders, his arm curled around him, fingers stroking weird patterns against his gross skin.

Wade shuts up, and five minutes later, he’s asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> BYE, I'M EAGERLY AWAITING YOUR RESPONSES


End file.
